Leading an International Education Quest! - Dr Jason Fox

To build for the future, we need something different. It’s time to venture beyond the default. It’s time to lead a quest.

This was the challenge Dr Jason Fox, a modern day wizard-rogue, author and leadership adviser set NZIEC conference attendees.

Using self-deprecating humour, and drawing on real life examples, Dr Fox challenged the audience to look at the patterns in their lives, to effect meaningful change.

Many of us are time-poor, which Dr Fox said causes us to ‘leverage our default thinking’. That is to do what we have always done. The concern is that we use default thinking 98 percent of the time. This is “robbing us of our best thinking.”

Defaults — established ways of doing things — are an important element of any enterprise. We need them — they save us a heap of time, and make us much more efficient.

But lo! Dr Fox said most organisations have now become cursed with efficiency and default thinking.

“We’re all so busy, and so what happens is… more of the same. We seek quick fixes and familiar solutions that tick the right boxes and save us time — but in doing so lead us closer down the path toward irrelevance.

To stay relevant, we must know when (and how) to disrupt default thinking, so that we may pioneer new strategy (beyond the established path).”

Conferences give us a rich opportunity to disrupt default thinking. He said new thinking is the most valuable thinking in a world that is undergoing profound social and technological disruption.

Dr Fox said if you ask workers in an organisation what it is that motivates them best, the most common response was “a clear sense of progress.” This underlines the importance of celebrating small / early wins.

In closing, Dr Fox talked about the things we do to put off meaningful thinking – procrastination, perfectionism, busyness, disorganisation, physiological sabotage, over-commitment and more.

To conclude, Dr Fox challenged his audience, saying “we all make choices and our choices make us.”